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don't worry about it George, its quality not quantity I require :-) and i now how busy you get.

as always I am on the lookout for something unusual/highly figured which will make a striking box.

Well, I promised that I was taken care of things immediately and I did, your box is packed and ready to post first thing in the morning...!

I have no lack of stunning pieces that are or would be most suitable for your mini box making, the problem is me reminding of you when I'm cutting woods, there is when I spot some more unusual stuff, not always big enough but you box blank sizes at 65 square x 100mm long is a reasonable size to work with but unless I remember, they will endup being cut as knife or pen blanks.

More recently, and since I built those heavy duty wooden shelves, I have been trying to pre-prepare my woods by cutting the logs a little shorter and cut it into square or rectangular blanks, normally 4 blanks per log (one for each quarter) and store them.

This not only saves me a lot of space, it also saves me a lot of time and back pain to get my hands on something that I run short of instead of going through piles of logs...!

I'm doing that bit by bit, the logs handling still affects my back but, I do a couple at the time on every other day and that helps a lot.

Anyway, I took pics but I didn't show you what I put in the box, I made a selection of the recent woods and the ones from before, I made that decision so that you can be surprised, I'm sure you will be pleased...!

Cheers
George

__________________"Don't give others what you don't like for yourself"

there perfect, just what I am looking for, thank you for sorting these out for me George.

i see the red and brown mallee but what are the other woods?

Oh wow, did I hit the nail right on the head..?

I'm glad you are pleased, I was sure you wouldn't be disappointed if you haven't seen the pics, I'm glad I was correct...!

There are 2 Red Mallee, one is from an older root (darker) and the other is in fact from a newer burl core, the area where the trunk and the burl meets.

The #57B is the Peppercorn tree burl, in this case the spalted stuff. The #10 is the Poplar burl and the #24 is the Cork tree burl. The brown Malle piece has some interesting patterns on it.

Pieces this size are not that difficult to get from medium or large Mallee tree burls, most caps would not be thick enough but what you have to remember is that these are Mallee root burls, they have always a lot more crevasses and gaps inside them, sometimes in those hollows we find rocks and unless they are sandstone, any harder rocks and blades get destroyed, regardless if bandsaws or chainsaws reason not everybody like to deal with the roots.

Being a sucker for pain, I take the risk and do a lot of swearing in between what makes things a little more difficult for the yield of clean wood is the fact that the roots are split with either a stump/root remover or a stump/root shear, I believe the shear is the one from the way the wood is split/crushed, I'm trying to see if I can get some full/unsplit roots, I may get lucky if I come up with the money to justify they driving 3 1/2 hours to get to me with a truck, will see...!

Cheers
George

__________________"Don't give others what you don't like for yourself"